Markets look set to move further to Labour

Further evidence of improving Labour fortunes comes in today’s ICM poll in the Guardian which has:- LAB 38: CON 30: LD 22: UKIP 2 The story is online.

The margin is one per cent less than an ICM poll last month which had Labour on 39% to the Tories on 30%. The Guardian in its myopic style never seems to recognise polls which it did not commission, even from ICM, and tells us wrongly that the poll shows the biggest gap since May 2003, when Mr Duncan Smith was facing his summer of discontent.

The Guardian only discredits itself by presenting polls in this way. We expect better.

Given that all the recent polls have shown the same trend there’s no doubt that the Tories are in serious trouble and we expect to see a move against the party on the spread markets and in the Labour and Conservative Commons seats markets.

It is also likely that the best price on Labour winning most seats will tighten even further from the current 1/6 with a conventional bookies and 1/5 with a betting exchange.

The only note of caution is to recall what Andrew Cooper of Populus observed earlier this month. If his firm had adopted the same approach to weighting previous voting as ICM then the Labour margin would have been 4% greater.

It will be interesting to see how this month’s YouGov poll, expected at the end of next week, rates Labour. Throughout the whole of this year it has reported it in a small 33-36 range and in its Euro Elections poll only overstated Tony Blair’s party by 1.4%. If YouGov has Labour moving upwards then it would further underline that there is a trend.